[racket] letoverlambda

From: Robby Findler (robby at eecs.northwestern.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 23 17:03:02 EST 2010

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
> Sadly, his response only makes things worse.  He writes
>
>  Some Scheme systems have theoretically advanced macro systems but I
>  believe the Common Lisp macro system is more suitable for writing
>  useful macros.
>
> Eh?  How about a huge chunk of the cool things in Racket, from the
> class system to Typed Racket to Lazy Racket to FrTime?

His response makes perfect sense. We don't have a a "theoretically
advanced macro system", we have a "practically advanced macro system".
Also, that is a part of Racket, not part of our support for Scheme.

All it says is that he needs to learn about Racket.

> He does not understand that a macro system that closes over bindings
> from other modules is a *fundamentally different thing* than a mere
> macro system.  It is hard to overstate this matter; it is foundational
> to what makes Racket a different language than Lisp or Scheme.
>
> In fact, this merely demonstrates that where macros are concerned,
> he's a Blub programmer.  (He may indeed be in the top-10%ile of
> Blubberers.)
>
> I'm aware that he says
>
>  If you disagree and have examples to back up your opinions, I'd love
>  to hear from you.
>
> but perhaps if he were truly interested in learning, *he* would
> contact the authors of those "theoretically advanced systems" and ask
> them to educate him, not put the burden on them.

It seems like little work to send him a link to Racket.

Robby


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